Tim Drake
Yesterday This Day's Madness did prepare; Tomorrow's Silence, Triumph or Despair: Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why: Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where. farewell to the days of having it both ways You could call Tim focused, driven, hard-working, and resolute. You could also call him self-centered, fixated, neurotic, and obsessive. Of the four Robins, Tim is usually emphasized as the thinker, the detective, and indeed, Bruce himself says that Tim is smarter than he is. Tim has been quoted as saying he lies to Batman. He has always been the most independent, proactive Robin -- from the beginning, when he insisted Batman needed a Robin and that he could be it, to patrolling alone, creating and joining other superhero teams (without getting fired lol), and even leaving Gotham for another city. He both nearly quit and actually quit once each, and maintained a relationship with Stephanie despite Batman's disapproval. It took a lot of hard work to get to this independent position, and Tim met the challenge, gaining not only Batman's approval but Lady Shiva's. He developed his own rogue's gallery in addition to dealing with Batman's. Tim's obsessiveness resembles Bruce's in that they sometimes get fixated on things and people to a potentially unhealthy degree. For example, Bruce's fixation on Superman is echoed in Tim's fixation on bringing Kon back to life. They are relentless in these pursuits, sometimes requiring intervention from friends and family to bring them back to their senses. Sometimes, however, they are not really "brought back to their sense" so much as they quietly modified the nature of their preoccupation; Tim hid his display cases (again echoing Batman's display case with Jason's uniform in it) with Stephanie's uniform and Kon's t-shirt in his cave underneath Titan's Tower. TitansTomorrow!Tim has lost much of the levity that he used to have as Robin, though he was always a fairly serious leader. He's still capable of it, as shown by the picnic with Cassie, but within a few panels he's right back to a very Bruce-like graveness. It's clear he's still fixated on Kon and Bart's death, as he managed to clone them both (and a few other people, it looked like). Though the clones didn't have any of Kon or Bart's memories, he was still attached to them, as he cried when he shot Kon. Now that he's been metaphorically floating in space, not really existing, he's quite a bit more resigned/zen about things. He sees everything in terms of time travel and inevitability. hell is other people; some people never learn. Tim is an experienced martial artist, trained in a number of styles. He is also an excellent detective and is trained in many disciplines, such as forensics, criminology, stealth, disguise, and escapology. He is good with computers, though not Oracle good, and photography; he also has a firm grasp on various sciences associated with genetics and cloning. He has deduced quite a few superheroes' civilian identities by himself. A normal human being, albeit one that is very physically fit, Tim is of normal strength for his age and size. Finally, he is a good leader and strategist, having led Young Justice, the Titans, and the Titans Army. when optimism fails and my cooler head prevails The version of the future seen in Teen Titans #50-54 is no more. Since their visit, many changes have come to past. But it is the past itself which hasn't changed. Even though this Timothy Drake-Wayne should by all rights have dissolved into nothingness with the rest of his future comrades, some vestiges of their presence remain -- with Miss Martian, for example, possessed by the consciousness of her future counterpart. With those remnants are the ghosts of possibilities, enough to sustain their existence, if not on the main timeline, then on a separate one altogether. They existed; their actions had real effects on the present day Titans. They have not been forgotten. But they are not the future that is coming: too many things are different. That said, this Tim shares his past with the young Tim who confronted him as Robin. At a young age, his parents took him to a circus where he met Dick Grayson, and, that same night, witnessed the death of Dick's parents. The tragedy made a huge impact on his life, particularly when he later at the age of nine made the connection between Robin and Dick Grayson due to the quadruple somersault move that he knew only Dick could have done. From there he inferred the identity of Batman, and began tracking the duo's actions through Gotham. Though his parents loved him, they were often away on business trips, leaving him with plenty of time to take photographs and clip articles. However, it wasn't until Dick's estrangement from Batman and Jason's subsequent death that Tim did anything with his knowledge. When Batman began to become more violent in his dealings with criminals, Tim went to Dick, asking him to return and be Robin again. Dick refused to resume the identity, though he agreed to help Batman. Certain that Batman required an actual Robin, however, he convinced Alfred to give him the costume, and ended up saving Batman and Nightwing during a fight with Two-Face. After much training, Batman accepted Tim as Robin. It was around this time that his parents took an ill-fated trip to Haiti and were captured by cultists. His mother was killed by the Obeah Man, and his father only survived because he had drunk less poison -- he fell into a coma. After this, Batman sent Tim to France to learn from a sensei that had taught him. In addition to learning healing arts from this sensei, he was trained by Lady Shiva, specializing in the bo staff because it was non-lethal. He went through many trials that Dick and Jason had not experienced before him, such as when Bane broke Batman's back and had to recuperate. Jean Paul Valley, Batman's chosen substitute, became increasingly hostile and crazy, forcing Tim to patrol alone until Bruce reclaims the cowl. Tim at one point contracted a form of ebola called the Clench; he and the rest of the Batfamily also went through No Man's Land, where shortly after a devastating earthquake, the government declared Gotham no longer part of the US and refused to send aid or allow any superheroes to enter. Bruce was charged with murder when David Cain killed Vesper Fairchild. And, when his father (who had awakened from his coma) found out that Tim was Robin, he wanted Tim to quit, so Tim did so. During this time Stephanie Brown, his girlfriend, became Robin, but was "killed" by Black Mask. Around the same time, Tim's father was killed by Captain Boomerang. And then his best friend, Superboy, died during the Crisis. Yeah, it was a shitty year. Tim adopted a new red-and-black costume and began trying to clone Kon. He was adopted by Bruce, just in time to meet Damian, Bruce's biological son with Talia and have several fights with him. Though he gained access to a Lazarus pit, he ultimately chose not to take any samples, despite the possibility of resurrecting his loved ones. I believe this is a key moment, and that if Tim had decided to take the sample, he would have been far more likely to turn out as TitansTomorrow!Tim, or something similar. Now this is where things get weird. The first encounter with the Titans Tomorrow group happened in the future, after the present day Titans end up there ten years forward. They find that the future!Titans are led by an adult Tim as Batman. They stay the night, but Superboy spots the Titans torturing Deathstroke, and the present!Titans decide to leave. However, the future!Titans try to stop them, succeeding in capturing Robin. Batman reveals to Robin that he has killed most of Batman's rogues with the pistol that killed Bruce Wayne's parents. He doesn't convince present!Tim that he's still a good guy, so (OF COURSE???) he decides to mindwipe all of them and send them home, because this will totally lead to the future they want. Needless to say, this plan fails, and the present!Titans return to the past with their memories in tact. According to TitansTomorrow!Tim, he and the Titans Army return to the past-present to preserve the future, and because they remember it happening to them. TT!Kon says: "We failed. The Teen Titans got away. They made it back to their present before we could wipe this future from their minds. Now they know what they were to become; the things we had to do to make the world safe... and they're dead set against it. My memories are already so different now, Pa. I... I think I... die?" Luthor and Ravager's conversation: "You can't just lock the future down!" "No, Ravager -- you can't. But if you manipulate certain constants, even the greatest statistical improbability has the potential to become a sure thing." "Constants?" "Just as I see my present as it currently stands, so I have seen all the ways my present once was. What I've found is that some people, no matter how much the world changes around them, remain on a path that is forever consistent." But for some reason, things don't go the same way they had or should have -- presumably? maybe? -- because actions taking place in this past-present affect those from the future. Besides the immense bizarreness of M'gann being psychically invaded by her future-self, it seems as if the "future" is in fact being rewritten with every moment. When Cassie kisses Tim, TitansTomorrow!Tim "remembers" it, and changes his mind, killing TitansTomorrow!Kon with a kryptonite bullet. Then all the future!Titans begin to fade away. This is a conversation between Luthor and Tim eight years after these events: "You're going to take his place?" "I am." "Even though he has yet to retire?" "His sort of heroism isn't enough anymore." M'gann implies that she "convinced" Tim, and that she can convince the others, too. Where does this leave TitansTomorrow!Tim? Drifting gently in time and existence, still a possibility if only in a significantly altered form. His memories are shaky, basically consistent with canon!Tim's up until a certain point. I will meet you at the point of diminishing returns. METATEMPORAL NARRATION*: Saboteurs will experience bizarre phenomena such as gradually acquiring memories and features from the replacement Time Line. The process in a reverting history technically takes place over metatime, not over time, but this way of narrating it is far easier. Category:Characters Category:Living